Can’t cancel BT broadband and home rental

baser999

Mum moved into a nursing home on Monday and I’ve called BT today to cancel the broadband and home line at her flat. Although I’m on their system as third party contact and have previously discussed everything about the account, it seems this doesn’t allow me to close the account, this requires her to physically speak to them, which she’s not in a position to do at present. Otherwise we need to present a PofA which we don’t have yet. 

So they’ll continue charging her £43pm until she’s either able to speak to them or we get the PofA; she’d been in the hospital for the past two months so they’ve already had £86 simply for having a connection!  She was already paying over the odds as she didn’t qualify for their social contract but didn’t want the hassle of switching to another supplier.
Seems this is simply a money making scheme and their advisor agreed as this is apparently a regular enquiry. And yet there’s no plans to change what’s in place . . . unless she qualifies under the bereavement category 

born_again

Can you not ring them from nursing home so your mother can confirm?

baser999

born_again said:

Can you not ring them from nursing home so your mother can confirm?

Can do, with great difficulty, as I explained to BT she’s hardly in a fit state at the moment to speak to anyone over the phone. The ever caring compassion face of BT 🙁

Rodders53

Raise a formal complaint?

WRITE (snail mail) to give the due notice to close the account/service.  Mum can 'sign' the letter you write if necessary.

baser999

An update - my brother visited this afternoon and mum was awake and aware enough to be able to mumble her name to the BT advisor. They’re happy to cancel the broadband and landline however if she/we want to keep her btinternet address they’ll charge us £7.50pm. It’s like printing money isn’t it 💰
We could sign up for an account elsewhere but there’s still stuff going through to that btinternet name so it’s easier to keep it for now.

sheramber

Does anybody else have a bt email address?

If you have BT email and you cancel your broadband with us, you can:

• Close your BT email
• Keep your email but with more basic features by getting Basic email, which is free
• Keep your email with the same features by getting Premium email, which costs £7.50 a month
• Keep your email with the same features, by linking it to a friend or family member's BT Broadband, which is free
  

https://www.bt.com/help/email/what-happens-to-my-email-address-when-my-bt-broadband-service-st

Ozzig

When we moved from BT we opted for the premium email as we all have addresses without extra numbers and letters in our names.
Also, at the time the basic option was webmail only.

Jonboy_1984

When I left BT I was systemic in what I did to replace the email address and it only took a few hours (and far quicker than I thought).

1) Created a new email address on a free provider e.g. outlook or gmail.
2)Downloaded the thunderbird email program(or outlook might already be on the machine) to a desktop PC and connected it to the bt account.
3)Went into the BT account online and marked every single email as unread(if you click on one and hold down Ctrl key you could use the arrow keys to highlight lots and then right click to get a mark as unread option).
4)Did a send and receive from the thunderbird client, which pulled all unread emails across into this local program.
5)Took a backup of the thunderbird data file and burned it to a dvd (or stick it on a usb stick)
6) Prepared a generic “This email address is changing to this@whatever.com, this email address will cease to work in 14 days” in notepad or word.
7) Went through the emails systematically (sorting by sender helped) and if from a personal contact or a needed subscription replied to the last email with a copy and paste of 6.
8) looked at the various online accounts/shopping services and logged in and updated them as required - doing this while still having access to the old email address for forgotten password reminders was important.